Western Australia has its first state by-election involving both Labor and Liberal candidates tomorrow since the Peel by-election in 2007, at which, in a non-portent of things to come, the Labor government of Alan Carpenter picked up a rare pro-government swing. The circumstances this time around would not appear to be fortuitous for Labor, as the by-election was initiated by the resignation in disgrace of Barry Urban, who won the seat from Liberal incumbent Tony Simpson at the March 2017 state election by a margin of 5.8%, after a swing of 18.6%. This was the eighth highest swing of the election, making Darling Range the fourth safest seat lost to the Liberals and Nationals at the election.
Urban’s career unravelled last November when it emerged that a decoration he wore for police service overseas, which he originally claimed to have received for war crimes investigations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, had actually been bought online, and that two British universities he claimed had awarded him degrees had no record for him. He resigned from the ALP shortly after the story broke in November, and announced his resignation from parliament on May 7, a day before the parliament’s privileges committee was due to bring down a report on the matter. However, Labor’s troubles didn’t end there: a similar, though less severe, controversy would shortly engulf the candidate anointed by the party’s state executive as Urban’s successor: Colleen Yates, former chief executive of Regional Development Australia Perth. It shortly emerged that Yates had exaggerated her educational attainments on her LinkedIn profile, a misdemanour she could probably have glossed over under other circumstances, but fatal in the context of the by-election.
Labor promptly announced its new candidate would be Tania Lawrence, senior manager of global business integration at Woodside. The Liberal candidate is Alyssa Hayden, who held a Legislative Council seat in East Metropolitan region from 2008 to 2017, when she unexpectedly lost her seat to One Nation. Despite the seemingly ill portents for Labor, the one opinion poll of the campaign, from ReachTEL, credited Labor with a clear lead. My newly updated guide to the by-election can be viewed here.
Go Labor!
It looks to me as though Labor have actually ended up with a classy candidate who deserves to win the seat. Who would have thought that a ‘senior manager of global business integration at Woodside’ would be a Labor supporter and putative candidate!?! I’m glad she is though. Go Tania!
C@t
Go Tania indeed! Try keeping up with her on a bike
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-22/labor-darling-range-candidate-tania-lawrence-on-motorcycle/9896478
Really expected this to be an easy recovery for the LNP doesn’t seem to be.
I’m going tip a Labor win 54-46.
The old seat of Darling Range was renamed Kalamunda in 2008. The current Darling Range covers the area previously covered by Dale (till 1989):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_results_for_the_district_of_Dale
Roleystone (1989-2005): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_results_for_the_district_of_Roleystone,
Serpentine-Jarrahdale (2005-2008)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district_of_Serpentine-Jarrahdale
These were all Liberal-leaning, but marginal seats based on the outer south-east urban encroachment. The seat (Dale) was retained by the Libs by 0.1% in 1983 and was ALP held 2001-2005 (as Roleystone), before being again made a notional ALP seat by the 2008 redistribution (Serpentine-Jarrahdale). The ALP have won or come very close to winning at every high-point in the cycle, which is where they are now. Probably equivalent seats interstate would be Camden (NSW), Glasshouse or Redlands (Qld) and the old Seymour (Vic). Its a seat the ALP should be expected to win at the next state election, unless there is a sharp overall downturn in the meantime.
Thanks for that Peter.
Labor to win comfortably.
The Liberal Party with their usual below the belt tactics:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-22/one-nation-rolls-into-darling-range-by-election-on-horse-fiasco/9899904
They are Liberals and Nationals. They are grubs.
Antony Green’s analysis of the Darling Range seat:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/darling-range-by-election-2018/
Interesting to note that the Liberal Party candidate lives in the Eastern suburbs (the posh part) of Perth, rather than the seat itself.
Also, there is a disaffected One Nation member running as an Independent.
Sorry, C@momma, but the Eastern suburbs of Perth are quite the opposite to the “posh”part of town.
Eastern suburbs is to posh as old Redfern was to Point Piper.
Small pockets in the hills are well to do, but for the rest, well ….
Fulvio Sammut @ #9 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 6:17 am
I think by “posh part” she actually means the hills. C@t is geographically correct, colloquially though “the hills” and “eastern suburbs” refer to different parts of Perth.
Well, Darlington’s quite upmarket these days, as are bits of Glen Forrest and Mahogany Creek. Parkerville and Stoneville are up and coming, and anything on the scarp itself with a view over the city has been expensive for a long time However, I’d challenge anyone to describe Mundaring, Sawyers Valley, Mount Helena or Chidlow as inherently posh. A a fair bit of gentrification has been going on of late though. The nightly rattle of small arms fire is much reduced and it must be a year or more since I last heard the crump of a recreational IED.
Hugh Brown @ #11 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 10:06 am
The suburbs of Darling Range that you mentioned are all sparsely populated, the major population centre of Darling Range is concentrated at Byford and it’s surrounds, which are among the poorest suburbs in Perth.
For those not from Perth, the south western side of the electorate borders on the seat of Armadale, WA’s safest Labor seat.
Indeed. I was more intending to counter the claim that Perth’s Eastern suburbs, even the Hills as a whole, are, in general, “posh”. Hence my inclusion of a few places that aren’t in Darling Range at all.
For the record, I’ve no idea which bit of them Ms Hayden hails from. On balance, probably a well to do bit.
Much of the electorate is unfamiliar to me. However, from what I have seen, much of Byford’s new development, for example, is likely to be inhabited by folk who overextended during the boom years and have been hit hard when the state economy fell in a hole. Rich pickings for Labor I would have thought, as former Lib leaning swing voters realise how dependent they actually are on a decent level of government services.
Given the stage WA is at in the electoral cycle, I’d be quite surprised if Labor lost. However even if they did, it probably wouldn’t mean much. The closest similar situation I can think of is the Nundah by-election in Qld in May 1991, 17 months after the election of the Goss government. The New ALP member of a long-standing conservative seat resigned because the job wasn’t what he expected and he felt he wasn’t up to it, and there was a swing of nearly 8% which nearly cost the seat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_results_for_the_district_of_Nundah#Elections_in_the_1980s
Then there was the more recent NSW Miranda by-election in 2013, caused because the new Liberal member, and minister, decided he wasn’t enjoying the job. That led to a record swing and cost the seat.
No trace of either result was apparent at the subsequent state elections.
I’ve got two real gripes about this by-election:
1. It doesn’t take much time to vet someone’s claimed uni qualifications after they’ve been pre-selected – had Labor HQ done that then, they would have avoided this whole mess in the first place;
2. The media (especially the execrable “West Australian”, which I won’t insult my f&c by wrapping them in!) will spin ANY swing to the Liberals – off Labor’s best 2PP result in WA history – as a “loss” for McGowan.
Cormann said that LP is not running candidates in the 2 federal by-election seats of Perth because they wanted to use their limited resources for Darling range by-election.
Can anybody provide info How LP spent in Darling Range by-election?
New thread.
This thread didn’t age well, did it.